This invention relates generally to environmental cleansing apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus for recovering metal from waste metallic solutions.
The disposal of solutions which contain a waste metal is a difficult problem since pollution ordinances in most municipalities forbid the direct dumping of the waste metallic solution into the municipality's sewer system. Various types of apparatus are known for removing metal from waste metallic solutions. These include electrolytic recovery systems, electrolytic metal recovery cells and electroless bath treatment cells, as well as various metal winning modules. However, all of these types of apparatuses are quite expensive to construct and maintain and are therefore uneconomical.
More specifically, the present invention is concerned with an electrowinning apparatus. As is known, electrowinning involves the production of metals by electrolysis, through the use of insoluble anodes, from metallic solutions or other solutions containing ores or other types of metals. It would be desirable to provide such electrowinning units with an extended life and reduced maintenance. It would also be desirable if such units were modular in nature, for ease of capacity expansion when necessary, while also being easy to maintain. It would further be desirable to provide a system allowing an extremely high rate of metal recovery as well as a high capacity plate out which could rapidly remove metals from a process solution.
Accordingly, it has been considered desirable to develop a new and improved metal recovery device for waste metallic solutions which would overcome the foregoing difficulties and others and meet the above-stated objectives while providing better and more advantageous overall results.